


If I Should Fall Behind

by divenire



Series: Prompt Project [7]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon, Character Study, Drama, F/M, This pretty much fits in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-09-30
Packaged: 2017-11-15 08:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divenire/pseuds/divenire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is pretty much an Allison character study. It's her thoughts on things after season 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If I Should Fall Behind

They pass by each other in the hallways and it's weird. 

It's weird not just in the way that it's always weird when you see an ex in the hallway, but it's weird because so much has happened and there is so much out there that all the other people in the hallway don't know exists and probably won't ever know exists. 

She has people to talk to about it, so it's not that she misses having someone who understands. She has people who understand. She has Lydia and she has Jackson. He has Stiles and he has Isaac. But they no longer have each other and it's sad. It's the kind of sad that alternates between hitting her full force and making her just stop in the middle of whatever she's doing and fading into the background, like a dull, throbbing ache. Either way, it never really goes away.

She doesn't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, with dating, because of all her reasons. She's a year older than everyone else and no one really ever understood that it wasn't because she was dumb or had been held back, it was just that she moved a lot. She moves a lot so the second she got involved with someone, she'd be moving again, so why bother? 

So she doesn't know how this is supposed to feel, she doesn't know what she's supposed to do, but she knows it isn't supposed to be like this. You're supposed to break up with someone because the way they popped their gum annoyed you, or the way they ditched you for insert sport or club name here got on your nerves. Or their hobbies were just too weird. Or they had stupid friends.

You're not supposed to break up with someone because you're the thing that hunts monsters and he's a 'monster'. You're not supposed to break up because it turned out your grandfather was psychotic and was using you like a piece in some game. And you tried to kill their friends. And sided against them in a battle that involved people getting injured. And you hurt people. And maybe you're a monster.

And sometimes she just feels broken. She feels broken in a way she's not sure anyone will ever understand. She feels broken in a way she's not sure can be fixed. She's not sure she even deserves to be fixed.

She's probably friends with Lydia and Jackson because they're broken too, and they can all kind of be broken together except for that a good half the time, Lydia and Jackson are off with each other, off fixing each other just by being together and... she... just... she's not getting any better. She's not sure she's not getting worse. And she can see it, just a little, every now and then. Every now and then when Lydia says she's fine, she means it. Every now and then, Jackson will smile and it's a real smile, not that fake, sharp, plastic one he uses to keep everyone away. 

So she feels like she's completely alone a lot of the time. Not that she spends a lot of time by herself, that part she's fine with, it's that she feels alone - like she's drifting in this big giant ocean and there's no one for miles, just her, all alone. And she can't really talk to her friends. And she definitely can't talk to her Dad. No, he's got enough issues, what with how in the span of a year he lost his sister, his wife and his father. She lost her mother, her aunt and her grandfather, and she's sad about it but... with the exception of her mother, she's really not. She's supposed to be, but all she feels is anger and rage picking at her like it's picking her apart. Because they were horrible people. They were the monsters. And she doesn't know what to do about that. And she doesn't know she isn't one, either.

But her father? Her father doesn't see it that way. Her father puts on a strong face and acts like he's fine, just as strong and sturdy as he ever was, but he spends a lot of time locked up in his room or out in the garage and she's pretty sure he spends a lot of his time stoned or crying. Or stoned and crying. Either way, his eyes are red just about all the time now and she can't really ask him why that is, so ridiculous as it might be, she's going to assume he's been taking something. The idea that he just cries that much and that often, and over people who probbaly committed enough murders in their lifetimes to be ranked among the worst serial killers in the country, just doesn't make sense to her. So they don't talk much and they barely spend much time in the same room together. 

And that's another thing that scares her. That it might very well be her best possible outcome in life to end up like her father. To end up with a life where sure, she isn't a monster, but everyone she loves managed to become one at some point and everyone else died or got killed or killed themselves at some point. So maybe it's best that Scott stays as far away from her as humanly possible, not just because she's a walking disaster, but because she might just end up getting him killed. Because being around her might get him killed.

So she's alone and no one understands and that's usually the definition of the words 'teenage angst' if you looked them up in a dictionary except for that in her case it's not that she doesn't like her body or that she's nervous about sex or her grades or college, no she's walking around with the constant fear that she's a monster. That she's become the same thing they were, a monster, and there's no changing that back. That there's no going back to who she used to be and that she's going to wake up one day and completely forget who that person even was. She's afraid she's broken and she can't be fixed.

That's probably the worst part. Maybe Scott wouldn't really understand either, but he probably just plain wouldn't care. Actually, he'd probably make a point of not caring. He'd make a point of showing her that he just plain didn't care how broken she was.

Like he makes a point of not looking at her, not talking to her and all around just avoiding her because that's what she asked him to do. 

Which is ridiculous, really, considering how much time she spends just staring at him when he isn't looking. She also spends a lot of time, when she's not worrying about the things she's done, thinking about the brief, tiny, pathetically small amount of time they spent together before everything went absolutely horror movie level insane. Because before her life turned into a horror movie she'd thought, if asked to classify it in terms of movies, that maybe it would be a romantic comedy. That maybe her life would turn out to be less dull than it had been and maybe all the boring, lonely years she'd suffered through previously would pay off in nice friends and a cute boyfriend and everything would work out in her favor. 

It didn't. 

And instead, it got worse. 

It got worse to the point she's not entirely convinced this isn't all punishment for something she'd done in a past life or something like that. Because why is this how her life has turned out? Why is this her life? 

She'd always thought she had a perfectly boring, if slightly scary and into guns kind of family. She would never, ever in a million years think that her family was so into guns and weapons not because they sold guns for a living, but because they used those weapons themselves.

She would have never, ever in a million years thought the family business wasn't selling weapons, but killing people. 

She's thought it all through more times than she wants to count but she's no closer to making any sense of any of it now than she was months ago. 

And she feels like everyone is moving on without her and she's falling behind. 

It's almost funny, in a way, that she's concerned about falling behind. She used to be really concerned about falling behind, what with the whole being a year older than everyone else and having had to repeat a year thing, that was probably her biggest fear up until about a year ago. Falling behind. But now? Now she fears it for an entirely different reason.


End file.
